November 24, 2008

Here's the (Madison Wisconsin) Capital Times article about Thanksgiving that Rush Limbaugh is about to rage about.

IN THE COMMENTS: Beth says:

Rush Limbaugh is about to rage about something? Stop the presses.

Rush Limbaugh is about to rage about something from Madison, Wisconsin. That stops the presses at Althouse.

UPDATE: Here's the rant. Rush really struggles with the text here, because he wants to conclude that the University of Wisconsin is pushing a -- horrors! -- multicultural curriculum, but it turns out to be about the bubonic plague, not anything about the comparative values and practices of Pilgrims and Indians. He ends like this:

I know it can't be proved because of the two words "most likely." The Indians were "decimated...most likely by a disease." It can't be proven. Nobody knows. This is just a multicultural curriculum which is designed to get as many little kids as possible to question the decency and the goodness of their own country.

That last sentence comes out of nowhere. It's where he intended the rant to end up, but nothing was getting him there, so he just said it anyway. He doesn't always do that, but when he does, it's really screechingly awful.

It's funny how the people in the comments section are so ready to throw out the entire "myth" of Thanksgiving without attempting to discover the reality of it. The Native Americans were not the only ones who suffered and died of disease in those early years; the celebrants of the "first" Thanksgiving happened to be the survivors of a nearly failed colony.

Furthermore, there were Native Americans present; the feast was indeed a diplomatic nod to the assistance the natives gave the colonials.

I think the article's author, as well as Patty Lowe, needs to study the history noted in Governor William Bradford's letter outlining that first celebration. There was no retailing of "bloodthirsty indians" in that narrative, only peaceful and amicable notice of their part in the harvest feast.

Blah... Jen Bradford beat me to it. But yes, I think it's necessary to separate out the later, 20th century myths, as well as the revisionist myths put forth by Lowe, Loewen, and others with the revisionist agenda. The reality may not align with the popular myths, but they sure as hell misalign a lot more against the revisionist ones exemplified in that article.

There are well spun truth pieces in this article: many local indians had died off from disease left by earlier ships visiting Cape Cod and the surviving locals did seek frienship with the Mayflower settler group. But the graverobber idea is a cheap attack. Of course the young [about 25 to 30 years of age]Englishmen explored the area in which they landed and that would include their looking thru all they found in the abandoned indian settlements. An easy book to find is as eyewitness as you can get [by william Bradford]called Of Plymouth Plantations. And yes these young people made friends among the few surviving indians sinc the indians who needed new allies themselves to help life go on. This with resulting in holding Feasts 2 to 3 days in duration as part of the tribal Alliance ceremonies. The Feasts came in years 2 and 3 after the landing and they were also noted for the giving thanks to their God for providing food enough to avoid starvation in a literal wilderness.It looked to them and the indians as if several harvest time weather events were true miracles in answer to their prayer and fasting.Of course there is no Thanksgiving necessary in a community where your God has gone away and left you on your own.

Rush Limbaugh is about to rage about something? Stop the presses. I guess he's back to his 1992 schtick. For the life of me I cannot understand why anyone wastes a fraction of life's glorious hours on that windbag.

I am a conservative and I confess to - CAREFUL NOW - being tired of the Rush thing. He has a great voice, and of course when he says in a passionate manner something I agree with, I can still enjoy him.

But the same is true for me about Jesse Jackson, who is someone I generally find to be despicable.

I started listening to him when I was still voting Democrat - I promised someone I care about that I would listen to a bit of his program daily for a month. It was all I could do to get through a few minutes at first. I wanted to scream! "Feminazis", indeed! LOL.

But the more I listened, the more he made sense. I won't credit Rush for changing my politics entirely, but he is part of the whole process, for sure. And I still don't always agree with him, but I do think he's brilliant.

This is one of a couple of times a year when the Left gets together for a vigorous group-masturbation session over pseudo-intellectual ideas such as "the other," and the "narrative." Leave them to it, they need the release.

MadisonMan said... 90% of the native population was killed by Bubonic plague prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims? Where do they go to make up nonsense like this?

I thought smallpox killed most of them. Introducing a disease into a population with no natural resistance to it does kill a wicked lot of that population.

12:17 PM

Right, but was it prior to the pilgrims' arrival? And if yes, who introduced it? Virginia was a few thousand miles away. Florida and the rest of Spanish conquered America were too. So, how did this plague appear in Plymouth?

For thousands of years the North American tribes fought with one another for control of territory in bloodthirsty battles sometimes bordering on genocide. Each tribe naturally wanted the best land it could control.

Then a very powerful tribe, which had found a way to cross oceans, made its way across the Atlantic and took the land from the "indian" tribes, just as those tribes had taken land from one another and other tribes had taken land from yet other tribes, the world around, and all throughout history back to the dawn of time. The powerful tribe was so much more powerful that it took all the land it wanted from all the other tribes. It was the most powerful tribe in the history of the world, attaining a degree of power that the other tribes in the world envied and resented.

But the powerful tribe was so far ahead of the other tribes in its ability to produce technological innovation and economic prosperity that its descendants lost sight of the need to control their territory, and took up decadent ideologies that taught that they were evil for being so adept and powerful. Weak, passive ideologues who had never fought to control territory for their people in their lives actively sought to disarm and demoralize their own people, even teaching the young that their people had no meaningful identity as such except as evil oppressors.

And so the powerful tribe's descendants lost control of their territory to the other tribes, who came at first in the guise of peaceful 'immigrants' (though they were really colonists) but later when their numbers had grown sufficiently used the powerful tribe's governing framework to take the money and eventually the territory of the powerful tribe.

Such is the price of the kind of magnificent success acheived by the powerful tribe.

Eventually, however, the remaining descendants of the powerful tribe, tho much reduced in numbers and hardened through hunger, persecution, and war, threw off the decadent ideology because to continue to have followed it would have meant their end. They adopted a sensible ideology that valued their own identity and right to exist, and a peaceful separatism that allowed them to hold their territory.

As are the "Enjoy yourselves at the holidays! But First! Set aside some time for guilt, because your celebration is predicated on savage murder and the sufferings of countless victim groups. Sit back while we list the atrocities..." People.

Eh, it may not have been a happy party for the American Indians (the preferred nomenclature of non-activist Indians by the way as per several American Indian friends I have at BIA) at the time, but I am having a hell of a spread this Thursday. We are evening having Bacon-Apple Pie.

Does "bloodthirsty" mean they were cannibals? And are you saying this was more "bloodthirsty" than the warfare practiced at the time (or later) in Europe?

I imagine some of them were cannibals, but what I meant by "bloodthirsty" is that the Indians were fully as bloody and viscious as any groups anywhere else. The modern liberal myth is that the evil, greedy white man exploited the peace-loving, mother-earth-preserving, spiritual natives. The truth is that the natives were busy bloodthirstily slicing off the scalps of their enemies, roasting them alive over fires, and so on - every sort of brutality that people all over the world dished out to their competitors. They were not any better or any worse than whites.

As conservative Comanche David Yeagley has said, if his people (the Comanche) could have wiped out the white man and taken his land, they would have, and they wouldn't have felt bad about it, either.

The theory is that earlier European traders, explorers--Spanish? Portuguese? British?--brought European diseases to the New World in the 1500s, and, as a result, vast, vast numbers of Indians were wiped out.

So...by the time the Pilgrims arrived, various tribes had been reduced to nomads. I think '1491' recounts a Pilgrim description of the scene in Massachusetts...The colonists were puzzled as to why some villages seemed uninhabitated.

This theory also explains what happened to the Mound Builder civilizations that existed in the south central U.S.

There were 15,000 Mandan Indians in a village in South Dakota (?) in 1738 when European traders first visited. By the time Lewis & Clark got there arond 1804, their numbers had been much reduced by smallpox. How many were left in 1838? About 125. Today no full blood Mandan are alive. All dead.

(As for bloodthirstiness, Indians of various tribes regularly kidnapped children from other tribes, including European settlers, to make them members of their own tribe. Many who escaped after years or decades wrote best-selling books about the experience. This is one of the reasons that settlers on the frontier hated and feared Indians.)

Well, at least we can agree that years later, our wonderful no fault founding father Thomas Jefferson sent a party out to explore those natives and used a woman and child as a human shield.

I think they accuse terrorists for such things nowadays. But our founding fathers were omniscient, kind hearted and never a naughty thought in their heads.

Anyway, in the end it doesn't matter much because that young teenage chick with child.. they sent out as a human shield for their "exploratory party" turned out to be a pretty sturdy chick, a pretty brave one, and a pretty knowledgable one.

and in my revisionist theory...probably one of the inital persons in the witness protection program.

and now years later she is on the dollar coin that no one likes to use anyway. It is the only coin with man, woman and animal on it. it's so diversified.

I gave one to my kid on his journey and I keep two in my car when i ever pick up hitch hikers and they tell me a good enough story.

It is a well-established historical fact that Captain Myles Standish got drunk at the first Thanksgiving and jumped up on the table and punched a hole in a leather beer tankard with his penis to thunderous applause.

Well, at least we can agree that years later, our wonderful no fault founding father Thomas Jefferson sent a party out to explore those natives and used a woman and child as a human shield.

Jesus H. Christ, now I've heard it all. The fact that one of the white men on the Lewis and Clark expedition brought along his native wife and child means they were "human shields". And now of course Sacagawea becomes the real heart and soul of the mission, the one schoolchildren should really learn about and that we should celebrate on a coin. She had nothing to do with initiating the exploration, planning it, paying for it, or leading it - but she was a translator and occasionally was helpful to the leaders of the expedition, and she was non-white, so in true affirmative action fashion, that makes her the most notable person. One more example of the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Skyler, having seen no evidence, jumps to a conclusion:Outrageous and irresponsible lies.

Really? What part of the evidence for this do you reject?

Or are you just annoyed that your heroic folk tale has been punctured?

I think Skyler is referring to the Bubonic plague killing off Native Americans as a lie. The bubonic plague killed off a good chunk of Europe in the mid 1300's but to my knowledge never got to the Americas.

Alpha you really need to pay attention to what people are stating and not fly off the handle. It makes you look, well, stupid comes to mind.

[Sacagawea] was never the queen of the mission. she was used for a government purpose.

What a load of rubbish. Sacagawea became a big part of the Lewis and Clark mythos long after the fact. Sacagawea's husband Charbonneau was hired in modern day North Dakota because she spoke Shoshone and they knew they would need that [Sacagawea was "one of his wives"]. This proved fortuitous since the chief of one of the Shoshone tribes they encountered was Sacagawea's brother.

Of course the Thanksgiving story told to children is not completely accurate - it's way oversimplified because they are children!

What they should be taught about the Pilgrims is that until property was allocated to each family and they were allowed to keep the 'fruits of their labor' the group nearly starved.

We should teach the children that the Pilgrims were celebrating their newly found knowledge of the tragedy of the commons.

The Pilgrims did take it as a sign from God that they arrived at a spot where the land had already been cleared. That there was already a crop planted for them is doubtful. I don't remember Bradford mentioning that... am I wrong?

Apparently there were English fishermen who had made contact with the Indians before the Pilgrims arrived, at least some accounts mention Samoset who asked for beer upon his arrival.

I sort of like the grave-robbing idea because it provides such a neat way to start celebrating Thanksgiving on Halloween, so we have more time to concentrate on Christmas and consumerism!

Both the effects of disease and the characterization of Amerindian groups has been something of a hot topic in archaeology for quite a while. I agree that 1491 is a pretty good book and it gives a good non-specialists overview of current thought (my PhD is in archaeology).

Challenging the various modern myths about Amerindians -- that they were peaceful, nature-loving ecologists for example -- has caused those researchers some grief, but there's enough good work in the literature that, among archaeologists at least, there's getting to be broad acceptance that the aboriginal groups weren't a while lot different from any other bunch of people that ever lived.

I am, actually, offended by the "grave robber" thing, and certainly by this: Loew challenged the audience to tell the correct version of events and think about what it means when they celebrate this Thursday with family or friends.

Of course children are told a sanitized, simplified, happy version of the story of the first Thanksgiving. They're *children*.

Getting one's panties in a twist over simplified History for Elementary school children is pathetic.

But the rest... the idea that we shouldn't have our turkey without an appetizer of guilt, without turning what should be an observation that reinforces things that are good for us and for society, into something vacant of any value at all... and for what?

Actually i like my further romaticized revisionist version about Lewis being in love with her not Clark.The clarks were steeped in government heroic deeds. Lewis, he ended up like other government people--either murder or a suicde victim.

The finanacial records on her and her sons wherabouts after the expedition just reek of further government involvement. You think after a mission to the moon like that they were just gonna let her go?

anyway, I have walked in her footsteps all over the prairie. the woman is my heroine of some sort but not in the way history tells. not in that way at all.

This is an example of where many people, often conservative, need a version of history that flatters them and reinforces their views. Even if it needs to be invented.

The same can be said for the Native Americans who want to sweep their own unsavory history under the rug.

Kenniwick Man is of an entirely different Caucasoid race that lived in the Americas before the current stock of Indians migrated from Siberia and other Asian areas. As the modern indians arrived, they wiped out the existing populations, took slaves of each other and in general were just as bad as any others as Mark so perfectly puts in in his post up thread.

So??? We all tell fables and weave fantasies about our ancestors. What do you want us to do about our own? Cry me a freaking river.

Actually i like my further romaticized revisionist version about Lewis being secretly in admirational love with her (they shared a love of nature more so than any of the other participants) Clark was probably enamored a bit. But then the Clarks were steeped in government heroic deeds. Lewis, he ended up like other government people--either murder or a suicide victim. He was just to sensitive.

The financial records on her and her sons wherabouts after the expedition just reek of further government involvement. You think after a mission to the moon like that they were just gonna let her go?

anyway, I have walked in her footsteps all over the prairie. the woman is my heroine of some sort but not in the way history tells. not in that way at all.

I haven't cut my hair on my head more than an inch in the past three yearsso you can do urine tests or hair tests. the pubic hair can be tested too. I will submit myself to any and all drug tests. I don't use the shit.

I don’t see this debate as destroying all that is good. The winners get to write history, which from their perspective is often myth, fable or fantasy. So now, here’s a push-back on this particular myth. Really, what is the big deal? History is always being challenged and rewritten. Loew’s story may not be exactly right, but it may not be exactly wrong. The universe is always looking to be in equilibrium. Some balance in the truth-telling won’t end the myth or the holiday, if the story is about thanks.

And, guilt is not always a bad thing. It’s a holiday for gratitude and thanks giving, right? Guilt goes away when the circle is closed. Maybe the circle hasn’t closed, yet.

Only if you are feel guilt about something that you have no personal guilt or reponsibility for. I don't feel the least bit guilty about Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims, Puritans, Christopher Columbus or Ponce de Leon.

The good must be destroyed not because it's not perfect, but because it is good.

Thomas Jefferson was a complex guy with many flaws. I wonder how the people who bitch about hagiographies would feel if someone reduced their life to their flaws?

I always felt it was implicit in histories that the characters were sexual deviants, reckless and cruel, possibly with digestive disturbances and bladder infections, but that we were to somehow skip our fascination with those things to focus on what was significant and different about their lives.

I guess not. And while we're at it, JRR Tolkien needs to rewrite Lord of the Rings to include all the bathroom breaks and masturbation that humanoid organisms are known to need.

Now why doesn't some professor roll with that idea? As long as some professors are just going to make things up about history, they should make it interesting!

"The story of Thanksgiving is the story of how an army of zombies rose from the colonial ground, and the Pilgrims defeated them with the help of the Native American vampires. Afterward, they celebrated with a feast, and the vampires found that they loved gravy as much as blood. That's why we always have gravy at Thanksgiving dinner."

This version also has the benefit of being more child pleasing than either version currently offered.

There you go. We could make Loew happy by adding that the zombies arose because they were angry about settlers robbing their graves. Then we could make Limbaugh happy by adding that the Pilgrims discovered the wonders of private property rights because the vampires weren't into sharing.

``Of course the claim to be willing to be willing to participate in a city if, but only if, it is good, is a convenient story for a bunch of born outsiders, say like these reporters, to tell themselves. It has its convenience for intellectuals generally. The point of the moment, Socratic or Hawksian, is its glimpse of perfectionist aspiration as calling on, or remembering, the wish for participation in the city, as if its moral task is to show the ground on which to withstand its invitation to cynicism. Perfectionism is the dimension of moral thought directed less to restraining the bad than to releasing the good, as from a despair of good.''

See, Cortez sent plague laden blankets north to Plymouth Rock, timed to arrive about three years before the Pilgrims landed, and smallpox smote the land, Indians too. This was done to divert criticism from the Spanish takeover of Mexico City and any killer smog problems.

In return, the Native Americans gave the Pilgrims and Cortez the itchy crotch disease, which caused things to fall off back in the old country.

Nothing has been the same since.

So help me Hanna!

BTW: God willing and the creek don't rise, I'll be flying in my land vehicle, by the Perkins on the Hill at about Noon or close to it on Thanksgiving Eve Day.

I'm so sick of this disgusting Republican meme that any criticism of America means you hate America...grow up.

I'm so sick of the disgusting liberal meme that teaching American history is all about the warts on the face of the nation and everything we do is evil and if we did something good, twist to to make it look bad.

Matt Eckert sez:“yea, i know thomas jefferson had a couple faults.he was bad with lending money.you know any others?“

Well he liked that underage poontang. Is sexing up your slave as bad as sexing up your intern?I mean he owned her after all.

“Underage”? Sally Hemings was between 14 and 15 years when she and Jefferson met (other than when she was a child). Abigail Adams, encountering Hemings in London, described her as a “good naturd” “Girl of about 15 or 16,“ so she obviously looked even older. Many many people got married or had romances at such an age in the 18th and 19th centuries, without folk looking down their noses at them as “underage.” To imagine otherwise or seek to apply modern-day sensibilities in this regard is be guilty of serious anachronism. Sally (a quadroon — one quarter black) was a beautiful girl who appeared “Mighty near white,” “very handsome” “with long straight hair down her back,” as described by a slave who knew her.

It's worth noting that Sally Hemings was the daughter of John Wayles, Thomas Jefferson's father-in-law! Wayles' fathered — via his first wife (maiden name) Martha Eppes — the woman whom Jefferson was ultimately to marry, Martha Wayles. Later, following the death of the last of his three wives (when daughter Martha was 13), Wayles, a Welshman, began a liaison with his mulatto slave Elizabeth Hemings, who bore him six more children in addition to the five he'd already had with his wives, among whom was daughter Sally Hemings.

Moreover, when Jefferson and Sally (thus, his late wife's half-sister) at age 14-15 resumed their acquaintance after many years separation, she was not his (or anybody else's) slave! Sally Hemings was sent overseas in 1787 as a last minute substitution for the servant Thomas had requested, in order to accompany Jefferson's eight year old daughter Maria as a traveling companion so the latter could join Jefferson in Paris where he was U.S. ambassador. By that time slavery had been abolished in France, and there Sally Hemings was a free woman!

Twenty-six months later, when she was 16-17, Sally, still free, voluntarily accompanied Jefferson back to Virginia, thereby automatically becoming a slave once again, after which she soon gave birth to the first of her and Jefferson's five children. The first child died shortly after birth, but the others grew to adulthood, and all were freed at age 21 via agreement between the parents. Back at Monticello, Sally was placed in full charge of Jefferson's “chamber and wardrobe,” an inner sanctum that none of Jefferson's daughters ever even visited. Note that had Jefferson freed Sally too, by Virginia law she would have immediately been banished from the state. (After Jefferson's death Sally was freed by his daughter Martha.)

In my view, Sally's acquiescence to returning with Jefferson to America tells us something significant about their relationship.

Source: Fawn M. Brodie's (the first historian to take the story of Sally Hemings' and Thomas Jefferson's liaison seriously) 1974 biography Thomas Jefferson, along with Sally and Jefferson's son Madison Hemings' Reminiscences (Appendix I, Part 1 of Brodie's book).

Are you right in the brain? Once again, Sally Hemings was a free woman (and she knew it) at the time their life-long (at least for the rest of Jefferson's life, 39 more years) liaison began. She voluntarily returned to Virginia to serve her man, simultaneously arranging freedom for her future kids, so in my view, yes it does make it “all right then” — or at least as “all right” as things could be arranged in Virginian society of the time. At a minimum, it shows that the circumstances were far more complex than folks imagine.

As for the Democratic Party, I'm not a fan of the present party of that name, but the party that Jefferson along with James Madison founded was called the “Republican Party” at the time, only by several name changes becoming known as the modern-day Democratic Party. As one of its founders Jefferson certainly isn't responsible for the historic evolution of that party over the last two centuries. Are you going to blame Abraham Lincoln if the modern Republican Party develops into something you don't like over the next century?

Hey pal I get it. You can hear no wrong about your slave banging bankrupt revoluntary who was by all accounts a despciable human being. He kept his slaves because it was money in the bank as he was a seflish spendthrift who betrayed every friend he ever had and his later writings and activities laid the ground work for the civil war.

Plus he loved the French.

He was by far the least likable of the Founding fathers.

But by all means make any excuses you want. I hate when the politically correct attack the old white men who created this country, but if there was ever someone who deserved to be smacked around it is old Massa Tom.

I get excited when I think about how much I hate Thomas Jefferson. He really was the first Democrat. He loved the French and hated business. He used Aaron Burr to murder Alexander Hamilton; you know he was behind it all, the puppet master. He undermined the great General George Washington the true father of our country who went his grave despising him. He humiliated and betrayed his so called friend John Adams. Patrick Henry wanted to prosecute him for his farcical govern ship of Virginia during the Revolutionary war. He had no friend’s only minions. He is by far the most overrated of the Founding Fathers.

As the Ghost of a Gentleman, dead these 260 Years and more, you may imagine the Tales of Adventure in untam'd Quarters of the Globe that I had read in my younger Days.

In truth, my earliest Reading was much proscrib'd by my Parents, intending me as they did for the Holy Ministry. During my Service in the Army, however, I more than made up for my youthful Neglect of this Species of Entertainment; the Reading of heroick Romances being a more wholesome Pastime in Camp, than, Whoring, Drinking & Gambling, the habitual Diversions of too many of my Fellow-Officers.

After my Discharge following the Wars, when I was first employ'd as Secretary to My Lord, the Earl of O-----, I had form'd an Ambition to become the anonymous Author of such Books; but, I may tell you, Madam, the appearance of Gulliver's Travels in the Year 1726, compleatly overthrew my Plans. In a Stroke, Dr. Swift turn'd such Tales on their Heads, having made one into a biting Satire, and thus all others of its Kind into Laughingstocks.

Dr. Pepusch and Mr. Gay did a very similar thing when they wrote their Beggar's Opera, and so drove Mynheer Handel's ridiculous Italian Operas from the Stage. Of course, neither Opera Seriæ, nor Tales of Heroick Courage in remote Lands ceas'd to be made; but, they came to be regarded with bemus'd Contempt by the more intelligent Part of the Publick .

The Story of the American Colonists' first ordain'd Day of Thanksgiving at Plymouth in Massachusetts was wholly unfamiliar to me from my Youth. I may have read an Account of it, as an Example of proper Christian Gratitude for GOD's manifest Favour; but, as you may imagine, it made as little Impression upon me as one of the good Rev. Dimwiddie's ancient Sixty Sermons Saving Sinners' Sicke Soules, that was forc'd upon me at about the same Time. I had rather have read Pilgrim's Progress, and at least found Pleasure in a lively Style, than to have had my tiring Eye fall on such dreary Examples of Christian Perseverance as the Story of the bare Escape by the so-call'd Pilgrims of New-England from the Ill-Effects of their own Bungling, all puff'd up as Divine Favour.

Nay, Madam, I was all for Tales of an entirely different Character. It may have been that my Imaginations were likely to run away with my Reason; but, had I thought of it whilst I was alive, I could hardly have conceiv'd of anything more rightly romantick than the Story of Sackajaweea, and, her Journey across the the North American Continent.

Indeed, I can imagine now how the Book would have been advertis'd, had Sackajaweea been born 80 or 90 Years earlier, and, the British more forward in pressing their Claims in America. If it were to have made the Lists in, say, the Year 1723, we might have seen the following, viz.:

The Indian Princess, or, The Slave Redeem'd.

Being a true Account Of the Capture & Enslavement of An Indian Princess, in The Mountains of Louisiana in America, By the Ancient Enemies of Her Tribe; Her Variety of Fortune, and, Her Ransom by, and subsequent Marriage to A French Gentleman Adventurer; and, Their Service to His Britannick Majesty as Guides & Translators, toHis Majesty's Corps of Discovery, In finding the Headwaters, & Traversing the enormous Length Of a previously unknown River, Emptying into the Pacific Ocean In the Regions North of the fabl'd Province of California, Thus laying a rightful British Claim To this new & unexplor'd Country; together with Episodes of Courage & Fortitude In the Face of Wild Indians, Attacks by Bears, Lions, Wolves, &c. Of Prodigious Size & Ferocity; and including, Tender Scenes of new Motherhood; An Affecting Account of The Reunion of

Princess Sackajaweea

With her Brother, now King of his People; and, Her tearful Departure to resume her Duties; Her subsequent Happiness; Delight in her Children, &c.

Illustrated with several curious CUTS. ____________________

LONDON:

Printed for Sebastian Cruikshank in the Strand; and to be had at Booksellers in the Principal Cities.

Anno MDCCXXIII

price bound 4s. 6d.

* * * * * * * * * *

Ah! Madam! I should have been laugh'd out of the Town, or, gotten a Fortune from such a Book! I would not have omitted a close description of Sackajaweea's firm, young Breasts, heaving as they were upon her Capture against her tight-stretch'd leathern Bodice; and, the cords that were cinch'd about her Arms and Ankles by her cruel Enemies, &c. But, all would have been concluded with a pretty Moral upon the Virtues of Marriage, Constancy, Motherhood, Duty, Fortitude, &c.; such that both a Parson & his Stable-Boy would have found Entertainment & Improvement enough in its Pages.

But, leaving off Projections of undone Literary Endeavours near to 300 Years old, I shall only say, Madam, that every Nation needs its Legends & Fables in order to bind the common People more closely together. The Arms of many a Family in Scotland, including my own, bear some heraldick Device from the Age of Robert the Bruce, whose Exploits were the Subject of several accurate Accounts from his own Day; yet, whose Legends abound in Scotch Lore, the Details of which may be not wholly truthful; and, indeed, may often be foolish Concoctions, cook'd up hundreds of Years after the Events they purport to describe. That does not prevent such Legends from serving their Purpose, which is the maintenance of an Ardour for the Liberty & Unity of the Scottish Nation amongst the People.

Similarly, you should not be asham'd of your own National Legends, such as that of your first Thanksgiving, or, even of better-attest'd ones, such as the fantastick Adventures of Sackajeweea; whose main Import & Thrust are the noble and good ones of human Brotherhood, Fortitude in the Face of Adversity, and, Trust in the Beneficience of a Supreme Being. A People who value these Ideals will never willingly thrust their Necks into the Yokes created for them by those who sneer at such Principles and the Tales told to inculcate them.

Altho' the Story of the first American Thanksgiving is, in its Original, thin Gruel indeed (as I above aver), I cannot forbear to remark, by way of closing, that, were I alive, I should be very glad to get such a Dinner as is commonly prepar'd in its Honour.

Praying that your own Thanksgiving Dinner, and those of your Audience, should, in no wise, consist of Gruel, I am,